Innovation District

What is missing today for European mobility startups, and how can IBE INTERMOBILITY Future Ways help?
 

Europe is not short of strong mobility ideas or technical talent.

What we at EIT Urban Mobility often see missing is the bridge between a successful pilot and a scalable business.

Part of that is access to larger rounds of capital, particularly at the growth stage.

But in mobility, capital alone is not enough. Startups also need access to customers, industrial partners and real-world deployment opportunities.

Calls like this can help create that bridge. They give startups visibility and credibility, but most importantly, they should put them in front of the people who can validate, buy, deploy or finance their solutions.

The best outcome? Leaving the experience with a concrete next step: a pilot, a commercial partnership or a relevant investor relationship.

When you assess a project, what is the first signal that tells you a solution could genuinely work?
 

At EIT Urban Mobility, we start with two main elements: the team and clarity.

Why should someone have a clear economic reason to pay for that solution?

The underlying technology can be very complex, especially in deep tech, but the value proposition should remain clear and simple to understand.

When it comes to the team, we look for the right combination of technical depth, commercial judgement and execution capability. Naturally, the evidence we expect changes depending on the stage: from differentiated technology and a validated pain point at pre-seed, to early adoption at seed and repeatable economics at Series A.

But it always starts with a real problem, a clear value proposition and the right team.
 

What kind of encounters do you expect to see in the Innovation District between those bringing a solution and those bringing a problem to solve?
 

The most valuable encounters are those between startups bringing new solutions and operators, transport companies, public authorities and industrial players bringing very concrete problems.

The best conversations are those that move quickly from “this is interesting” to questions such as: “Where could we test it? Who would use it? What value would it create?”
 

Mobility innovation becomes meaningful when it works in the real world.